


You're in the rain

by tothemovies (jarofactonbell)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, because they're not boyfriends but they're not just friends either, is that the tag for 'it's complicated'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-08
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-06 14:06:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18389933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarofactonbell/pseuds/tothemovies
Summary: Shouyou closes his eyes, slides the volume to a deafening roar, and leans back against wood-eaten shelves.Time rewinds, and starts again.His shoulder touches Tsukishima. It’s something, and everything.They don’t pull apart.





	You're in the rain

**Author's Note:**

> hello i am projecting into tsukihina and turning it into a story it's how i get through life. ALSO I WAS LISTENING TO THE ROSE'S 'SHE'S IN THE RAIN' AND I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE IT so the appropriate response is to have it feature in a fic PLUS IT FITS SO WELL OWO LISTEN TO THE ROSE PLEASE I LOVE THEM
> 
> first day for tsukihina fan weekend! day 1: using both prompts of library AND change, here's my entry!

Being a library monitor would be a million times easier if he has the height to reach for the taller shelves to stack the books away. He can’t climb the shelves - he’s got too much muscle mass for those frail wooden things to not topple over - and he can’t just ask someone else to do his job for him. This is a Big Person Responsibility and damn it is he going to do it right.

Yugito-san, the upperclassman who was a monitor in her second year, had shown him the wonders and practicalities of the step stool that the library invested in, after its notorious recruitment of a lot of short people who just miss out on the top level of the shelves.

Izumi thinks it’s a conspiracy. Yachi thinks they’re just providing opportunities for those who are vertically challenged, such as herself. Shouyou agrees with both.

Suga-san thinks that he’s undertaking too many responsibilities and he might collapse one day out of sheer exhaustion, but he has a speech ready. He has to constantly be in motion otherwise his heart might outpace him in its routine inexplicable war rhythm to drown him in excessive worrying. He can’t have that. He can’t have himself be on edge while he’s trying to concentrate on homework or analysing volleyball play. So he must make himself physically tired along with mentally exhausted to slow everything in him down. Slower. Slower -

slower.

A step on the stool, tiptoes holding his entire structure up. Just skin and bones, muscles tensing to push the book by the spine inside its designated spot. Back on his heel, both feet on the stool, a foot down on the ground, the other. Wash, rinse, repeat.

This monotony calms him down.

The library is a quiet lull of students researching for their assignments and discussing projects together, talking from behind their palms and through their clamped teeth. He passes by, unnoticed, a mop of orange hair in a sea of black and brown, but because he’s smaller than what people are used to, their eyes skip right through him.

That’s okay. The library is not where he will shine. He knows this. Invisibility itself is not a terrible ordeal. 

With his bundle of books, too large a stack for his short arms to clutch without posing a direct danger to everyone else and himself, he waddles and sways through the sizeable group of students crowding before the biology reference section, tumbling into a shelf and dropping at least half of his books to steady the wobbling structure back into stability.

This holding book with his short arms won’t hold success for him. He lowers the rest of his books to the floor, starts picking the fallen tomes and stacking them into a mini-tower, reminiscent of a Jenga game that he does not want to be collapsed or pulled apart, when he does a spine check and realises he’s missing two.

They lie near the feet of someone, legs sprawled on the ground, leaning against the shelf and perusing through a stack of books.

They seem familiar. The way they hold themselves and the lean of the head, thumbing through the pages. Something is amiss. A marker of a distinctive feature that would have been a dead giveaway but had otherwise obscured him from recognising who this -

A flash of blonder under the black hoodie, gold eyes, a perpetual frown.

Shouyou almost drops his books.

_ “Tsukishima?” _

Shockingly, in addition to being tall and blind, Tsukishima has the propensity to act like an asshole at the worst possible timing, so he pretends as if Shouyou is just another piece of furniture, as he is wont to do, and carries on his reading.

“Pass me the books, Tsukishima,” he hisses, because he’s not risking himself in waddling over and getting kicked in the kneecap. “Come on, slide ‘em over.”

Tsukishima flips a page loudly and obnoxiously, and tightens the strings of his hoodie, so that it obscures Shouyou from view. If anything, he slumps down even more, long legs and back and everything just obstructing the narrow space between two bookshelves. Shouyou can’t squish through. He can’t get through without sustaining mildly concerning injuries inflicted by a perpetually angry blonde giraffe.

“Why,” The Biggest Pain in the Rectum intones, flat and unimpressed, as if Shouyou doing his job is an eyesore to humanity at large, which, Rude.

“You really think I can crawl over there and not get smacked for breathing,” he hisses back. “I’m not stupid.”

Tsukishima’s sigh is a loud and burdensome thing. “Could’ve fooled me otherwise, Loud Mouthed Idiot Number Two.”

_ “Why am I second place?” _

“What else, if not your height,” Tsukishima rolls his eyes, sitting back up. Shouyou compounds all of his limbs further into himself, in the case of the blonde getting up suddenly and landing a roundhouse kick between his eyes. It is highly unrealistic, but Tsukishima is fickle at best, and homicidal on the regular, so he doesn’t want to take the chance of spending time in a hospital.

“Rude,” he complains, shuffling a little away from Tsukishima drawing up his legs and rising. “Are you leaving?”

“It’s late. I do have to go home and do other things. Not all of us have a lot of time to waste,” Tsukishima stands, and dusts himself clear of invisible lint. The twist of his lips is just a nasty sight, a sour lemon in human flesh - with the mop of yellow hair - and he turns his back to Shouyou, rearranging his uniform and packing away his books.

The scorn and disdain intermingle on the permanently unpleasant face just twist its probably conventional feasible features into a vortex of Come Near Me and Taste Death, no that the other girls in their grade have been deterred by the front Tsukishima puts up, but Shouyou knows better. He’s been the victim of a lot of volleyball lobbing and quite frankly, assault, and there is nothing feasible in Tsukishima’s everything that would convince him to be on any ground other than Not Kicking Him at club and games. He knows what is a lost case when he sees it - and Tsukishima is not a case that can take only one year to fix up the apparent torn battlefield ground that they started on.

Shouyou creeps surreptitiously to his fallen books, swipes them off the floor and darts back to his pile of books, crouching like Golem and his hoard of precious. There is no sign of Tsukishima pretending to interact with him like a normal human person, and so Shouyou is relieved. He fares better when there is straight up ignorance of his existence. It makes everything so much easier for him to move around because he’s not here, they don’t care enough to see him and kick him out of the way.

While he’s there and trying to covet his books from danger, his brain finally processes the words thrown at him. He’s slow when a fight is unfurling before him in intellects and words and wit, because those are not his forte, and needs time to catch up to speed. His brain is tired today, because his body is tired and his brain more so, and Tsukishima is not considerate to the pace in which Shouyou sets and runs at. It is not a surprise, nor does it serve as a source of offence to him any longer. Tsukishima never accommodates, not for anyone. Shouyou scuttles back, frown unfolding across his face.

“Don’t bother me next time,” is all Tsukishima offers him before shouldering his bag and turning. 

“I’m trying to fill up my time with meaningful jobs. I don’t think you should pass on judgements of others before giving them and their stories more than two seconds of regard,” he calls out to the lumbering back, disappearing behind shelves of books.

Whether Tsukishima heard or acknowledged him or not, he will never get to know.   
  


 

Club comes, passes, goes by. It is the monotony of routine that keeps his thoughts lulled, and the itch under his skin mollified. It is the same motion, the same game, different plays - the swing and rhythm of routine weaved tight under bones and sinews - that keep him in check. The tension in his wound-up body holds up upright. He is without whispers in the whorl of hair on the top of his head, he is without the nagging voice reminding him to be wary of where to look, how to stand, what to say, how to act - so that this facade can be maintained, so that balance is restored and nobody pays attention to the cracks under his chin and on the back of his hands. He doesn’t look anyone in the eyes, not directly in conversations, unless he is challenging them directly about their philosophies, because it is nice to have a philosophy, and nicer to uphold it, and he doesn’t want them to be listless, listless like he is.

His eyes hold all the pleas and cries he is too busy suppressing, and he gets into the habit of looking more to the ground when he is not obliged to maintain eye contact. It is a constant vacillation between maintaining the performance and avoiding the world - and he walks a tightrope between throwing his heart into a play and sprinting clean out of the theatre.

Volleyball is a place where he can concentrate all of that energy and let it run wild. But when the ball drops and the whistle blows - he cannot direct the jitters under his fingers and in his legs elsewhere and be still, too many tasks to complete to the standard of perfection he uphold to himself. Volleyball is a teetering edge - the place of salvation and despair - and he is both saved and damned.

Which is exactly why the library is needed. As an intervention. A brake on his barrelling speed towards destruction.

Amongst the books, he can be Shouyou. He can shed the skin and be somebody else entirely. The pages do not condemn him for his nervous foot tapping and constant hair tucks, every other second. The tomes do not mock when he clutches his heart suddenly, when it beats to a rhythm unheard of everywhere else, so maddeningly fast that his head spins, and he needs to crouch on the ground, feet touching the floor, knees by his ears, trying to shut out the ghostly rhythm.

It is a haven. A place of no judgement.

And it is crashed, once again, by a certain someone.

Today, Tsukishima is by a library desk, out in the dusty particled light, carding his fingers listlessly through the pages of a yellowed book. No glasses - they are on the table. Guess he's tired of seeing everything in high definition. Or the world in general.

Tsukishima looks up, makes a direct stare to his face, point blank range, looks back down, flipping another page.

Shouyou thinks he's being targeted. But he doesn't know what for.

When he returns, to check up on the desk, Tsukishima is gone. The page he was reading is bent, corner curling. 

“Sheep song,” his fingertip traces over the title. “What is he doing with this?”

  
  


Volleyball. School. Lunch. Volleyball.

He checks in on the library once before leaving. 

He sees Tsukishima still. Completing his homework. Getting that education. Obtaining the Knowledge Bread.

Shouyou flitters in and out, putting away stray books, and bides goodbye to Yugito-san.

“That one's yours?” She flicks a neatly polished pointer to the general direction of the Salt Lake Embodied.

“Oh no _no,”_ he denies immediately. “I have nothing to do with _that.”_

“Not asking you to babysit him or anything, Shou, but he is in here a lot. Should we stage an intervention at some point?”

Shouyou is a little bit concerned, no lie, but he's not going over there and exhibiting human emotions to Tsukishima. He'll be smacked for that. Unreasonably, for being a human person with concern for his fellow club member. 

“Uh, you know those warning signs at zoo enclosures where they say like, Dangerous Animal With Big Teeth, Will Bite If You Come Within Sight? That's that guy.”

Yugito's eye roll is enough to decapitate a lesser man, but Shouyou is a different breed of animal, capable of developing immunity against disappointed glares. 

“I will see if he's dead, like, periodically, but I'm not coming near him. He's tall and angry.”

“You're short and angry."

“Ha ha ha, but I don't jump right to assault first whenever people approach my way.”

“Shou,” the upperclassman smothers her hand across her face. “Go sort out the nonfiction section.”

Tsukishima sulks out, no book borrowed, as quiet as he came in, when Shouyou chances upon him while cleaning the classical section.

_Sheep song?_ He totters over. But it is _No longer human_ this time, the emphasis of Tsukishima's focus mostly on the suicide scene.

Shouyou tries hard not to think about the implications this poses.

  
  


“-‘kishima?” He whispers, a note of distinct horror in his voice. “Why are you sleeping on the floor?”

The lump of tall bones, demonic snark and blurry eyes surprisingly doesn’t even budge. Shouyou thought he was a light sleeper. He always wakes at the supposedly deafening sound of anyone existing in his general vicinity, so this is a surprise. And not a nice one.

He tries for a harder and longer tap on the shoulder and arm. Nothing. It’s like Tsukishima is dead to the world. Hopefully not literally, because he’s pretty sure nothing can kill Tsukishima before passing the stage of suicide by sheer annoyance at this human embodiment of salt first. But hey, that excludes the chance of Tsukishima posing as a danger to himself. He knows that there are underlying issues that his teammates, even this one, face, but he’s not at the jurisdiction to start counselling them when he himself can’t even begin to check himself for his problems. 

But should he be leaving this lump of human salt just...lying around on the library floor? 

Somewhere, in a criminal statute, this is a crime of negligent. He should be helping, be a good Samaritan.

Shouyou’s brain is just telling him _hnnnng no_ and for once, it’s not full of rubbish ideas. 

Should he...just stay here then, and look after this fallen sentinel of the Salty Land?

He's still got club left. Should he be leaving this one here?

Daichi is probably looking for him. Uhhh.

Making a quick - and most likely stupid - decision, he pulls out his hoodie from his bag and drapes it across the boy's knees. Patting uselessly, so check that it's in place, he springs up, pretending that none of this had actually taken place and sprints away, leaving both things on the library corridor, surrounded by depressing Meiji era tragic plays.   
  


 

An intermission.

He starts listening to bands, Korean ones, that Yaku-san has a preference for. Kenma too, recommends a few punk rock songs for his shift of rhythm, compliments of Kuroo. He's been compiling a playlist, setting out scores to even up the tempo of his unsteady mind.

He sees the appeal now, in Tsukishima always wearing headphones. The music is loud. There is only him and the song playing all around him. Nothing else matters except the song.

He doesn't know if Tsukishima will appreciate it if he suggests a change of pace, redirect the course he had been steering towards for however long. He doesn't know if he even quite understood what is going on with his teammate. Matters of the heart and mind are complicated. He ought not to impose his own meter to the advancement of Tsukishima's tempo.

An intermission. 

He finds music, and it deafens the noise inside his head to a lulling pause.   
  


 

Shouyou finds that, if he doesn't approach Tsukishima, that become grounds for the other boy to seek him out.

Theirs is a game of hide and seek, though never intentionally. He searches, and finds empty air. Tsukishima searches, and finds shadows in his place. They elude each other, the moon never finding the sun, and thus, never meeting.

The rotations of everything spinning in obsolete structure around them tell them that there is to be an eclipse, where the sun and moon will cross. Where all light is shut tight in a vacuum of space. Where if you look, it will blind you.

Shouyou runs across Tsukishima, across from where their fun section of Dead Composer Music stands. Tsukishima is a formidable shadow, eclipsing sight from within the section, and he cannot go through without first acknowledging the presence.

He doesn't have time for that. This SOS signalling, Easter Bunny eggs hunt, wild goose chase - it costs too much energy to care and be rewarded with vilification. 

He bows, an unexpected move, and goes on with his tasks.

He thinks of himself as simply the tide biding by the moon's will, free falling as the tug and pull motions wish. Routine. No drama. Things are as it always had been and ought to be.

So when he is off his duty and is simply browsing through old volleyball videos on his phone, homework left open 

“Shrimpy,” Tsukishima intones, towering over him.

The height feels less like a ridicule and more of what had and ought to always be.

“Your Highness,” he replies back, eyes still fixated on the set up. That was nicely done. Truly carried out in the fashion of Pulling Rug From Someone’s Feet. He can drink to that, with strawberry cordial.

Tsukishima doesn’t say anything, but he lowers his headphones, looks right at him. Or through him. Shouyou has half an eye that is aware of all and every danger posed against him, but he’s really focused on how they do that thing with the receives no gravity is not meant to do that.

“Can I help you?” He looks up. Doesn’t mean for it to be a blaring sign for Tsukishima to start storming over, eyes blazing gold and fury.

“What do you know? _What do you know?”_

“Nothing!” He holds up a hand. He is, in essence, unaware of everything that is happening. “I’m not going to make you tell me what’s going on, Tsuki -”

“I don’t need help,” Tsukishima whispers, eyes wide, so wide. “I don’t need help.”

“You don’t have to,” he whispers, a touch less desperate. “I'm not forcing you too. This...Tsukishima, this is a safe space.”

He wants to add more, but that's just really asking to get smacked and he needs to finish this volleyball match.

“What's with you? How are you so,” a strain, a point of tension and break. “Nonchalant? What about you? How are you dealing with it?”

“Nothing,” he stashes away his device. “And everything at once. You're okay. Nobody is going to lose it besides yourself when you come in here for what you need to do. Just. Do your thing and I'll do mine.”

“Nothing is ever that easy.”

“It's not easy because you make it hard for yourself, Tsukishima Kei,” he corrects. “That's all there is. Have a good day.”

 

 

An intermission. Tsukishima stops coming.

Yugito doesn't ask questions, but she looks at him for answers. He doesn't even know what the questions are.

There is a break. A lull in time. A loss, the fall down the precipice. They have to work harder. Be better. Kaa-san looks at him with the old sorrow in her eyes, the same one she's been wearing since his fingers touched the skin of a volleyball.

He stare more at the ground. Longer and harder. Only budges when it is time to him to depart. 

  
  


The top shelf seems so far away now.

That is so rude. Who makes them so tall? What use are they in being so unnecessarily tall? Do they gain anything from it? Does anyone gain anything from it?

He vindictively adds a few more question marks to denote his outrage inside his mind.

His shoulder has been a liability for the last couple of days, and he's under very strict orders from all the upperclassmen, coach and Takeda-sensei to not make it worse. Stacking books away will make it worse, especially if he has to reach above his head and beyond. Which he conveniently forgot to mention to Yugito when he waltzed into his shift today.

Well then. _Big oof._

He hasn't tried pulling his arm clean off his socket to stack away some books - he's not that stupid. But Yugito is also short and nobody tall is walking around for him to hitch a piggy back ride to the top of the shelves, so these books will have to sit around aimlessly until they find -

Tsukishima rams into him, seemingly from nowhere.

Shouyou tries to steady his falling books and novels, but a few topple off his arm and into free air.

His mind only supplies an ever so helpful oh no as the ancient books cascade onto the floor and inevitably die in a dust storm.

Or not.

Tsukishima rescues them with only one swipe of his freak giraffe arms and scoops them up, eyes blank and not making contact with Shouyou's. What is this. What is happening. Why does he not have question marks in his head.

“Where do these go?” The blonde abomination grits out, the same way people would say Did you kill my father, with swords all brandished. 

“Uh, top of the shelf, Tsukishima, why are y -”

With a lot more coordination than he could have managed, Tsukishima got the job done and over with in less than a minute, even taking from the pile in his arms 

“I'm maintaining your playing condition,” is the muttered and caustic response he received, in answer to absolutely zero of the questions asked. 

He frowns harder.

“Okay but why are you h-?”

_Stupid athlete men,_ he definitely can hear. 

“I'm here so you don't break your shoulder joint for good. Anything else that needs height or physical exertion? And give me that stool,” Tsukishima demands, tapping his arm until he gets off the stool and stealing it from him, holding it hostage under his gangly giant arm.

Shouyou is confused. But it's not a bad kind of confused.

“Did Daichi-san send you?”

“I sent myself,” Tsukishima barks back. “I'm trying to deal with my issues my own way. Let me do this.”

“Is your form of therapy being empathetic and human?” He grins, tottering behind the freakish Big Foot strides. 

Tsukishima glowers harder.

“What else do you need me to do?”

Shouyou thinks he's trying to apologise, but without using the actual words to communicate so. It's still big for a first step, given Tsukishima. Shouyou is proud of him. He actually took feedback and worked on it.

“Smile a little? Don't be so violent?”

“I'm going to put all of your shoes on the top of the change room lockers and you'll have to bike home without a shirt.”

“So mean, Tsukishima-chan ~”

(He stays.)

  
  


An intermission.

“Why were you looking at those poems and plays?”

“Because they're the stuff everybody feels but nobody bother to talk about. It's...it makes me feel less alone. That I'm not the only one feeling abject despair over nothing.”

“I think you should just read a reference book on depression in your case, Tsukki.”

“Call me that again and I'll string you up on the nets today.”

“Ehhh so mean ~”

“And why are you here? Isn't volleyball enough emotional fulfilment for you?”

“Yeah, and nah.”

“That actually makes no sense.”

“Like, I  love volleyball, but I also need a break from it time and time. Don't give me that look, I get overwhelmed too. So this is just an outlet. To like, focus my head.”

“Hm.”

“And also I don't have to be under pressure all the time. I'm just whoever I want to be in here. It's good for my soul.”

“I suppose when you don't want to face other people, this is a good place to hide in.”

“Hm.”

“Don't copy me.”

“Yeah, so, this is my break down ground. Feel free to make it yours too.”

“Hinata, that's deeply disturbing. This is a place of learning. A sanctity.”

“Yeah so safe enough for me to bawl my eyes out in.” 

“Just. When that happens, just find me. I'll like, watch over you. Heavens forbid anyone else be scared off by this.”

“This becoming human thing suits you, Tsukki-chan.”

“I'm leaving.”

  
  


An intermission. 

They don't speak. They share half of Shouyou's duties, study, read, nap, cry, angst and banter, together. Side by side. Whatever that means.

They don't speak. But whatever is between them weighs more than what words can alone say.

  
  


He is by himself, back against the spines of ancient tomes, Woosung and guitar chords the only constants he needs.

It gets so loud sometimes. He doesn’t want to be the target of the onslaught of everything crashing and falling.

A heavy weight settles by his side. Silent. Unspeaking.

_ I’m so scared of seeing the end in your eyes. _

He doesn’t turn the music any louder, but he does look.

Tsukishima, knees by his cheeks, eyes ahead. No glasses. They hurt his ears and nose. His fingers are picking at each other, lacing and coming apart. Again. Again.

He shouldn’t be doing this. He shouldn’t be falling sideways into Tsukishima and crashing into his orbit, disrupting the rhythm that is already set in the motions.

He shouldn’t, but time has no hold on them, at least in this pocket of stillness and dusty air.

He shouldn’t, but he takes out an earbud. Offers it to Tsukishima.

The bridge starts. 

_ You wanna hurt yourself I'll stay with you _

The other boy takes it. Slots it into his ear.

_ You wanna make yourself go through the pain _

Shouyou closes his eyes, slides the volume to a deafening roar, and leans back against wood-eaten shelves. 

Time rewinds, and starts again.

His shoulder touches Tsukishima. It’s something, and everything. 

They don’t pull apart. 

_ We’re in the Rain _

_ In this falling rain I fill the scattered you  _

_ so I could see how beautiful you are  _

_ No whoa _

_ We’re in the Rain...  _

**Author's Note:**

> would've liked this to be longer but my brain maxxed out so uhhhh have a bad ending i'm so sorry?
> 
> pLease find me on social media i am always and fully a weeb: [twitter](https://twitter.com/tacobell_com), [curious cat](https://curiouscat.me/jenny_benny) and [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tacomakers-central)


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